dsh-crt-terminal

dsh-crt-terminal

A amber phosphor CRT terminal theme for the DeepSeek Harness UI (Web and desktop).

Amber palette, phosphor bloom, scanlines, curved-screen vignette, square corners, boxed panels with corner brackets — plus synthesized terminal audio cues. No assets, no fonts, no audio files: pure CSS over the design tokens DSH already exposes, and Web Audio for the sound.

Part of dsh-crt-skins. The sister skin is dsh-pipboy-terminal — the same idea in Fallout Pip-Boy green, with a stable screen instead of scanlines, and the pair can be switched at runtime.

Compatibility

• Verified on Windows 11 against DSH Web 0.1.5-rc.1 and the DSH desktop app 0.1.7-rc.2.
• Uses only documented design tokens, the client plugin API (dsh.client / dsh.bundle) and Web Audio; no private DOM. Newer DSH builds are expected to keep working — please open an issue with a screenshot if a panel frame or a token looks wrong.
• Install target: GitHub source (github:laohankk/dsh-crt-skins), not published to npm.

Install

From the skin market: Settings → Skin Market → search “CRT Terminal”.

From this repository (monorepo subpath, pinned to a commit):

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add "github:laohankk/dsh-crt-skins#&path:/packages/skins/crt-terminal"

Or from a local clone:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web add "file:C:/path/to/dsh-crt-skins/packages/skins/crt-terminal"

Then restart DSH Web (dsh web).

Remove it with:

npx @deepseek-ai/dsh plugin --profile web remove dsh-crt-terminal

Sound

Audio cues are on by default and start only after your first interaction, so nothing plays while the page loads.

Cue	When
two-tone rising blip	a control is activated (click / tap)
short tick	the pointer moves onto a control, throttled to 16/s
noise clack + low thump	typing a character
deeper clack	Enter
sharper clack	Backspace

Mute / unmute: Alt + Shift + M. The choice is stored in localStorage["dsh-crt-terminal:sound"] and survives reloads.

Programmatic control:

// from the browser console
window.dshCrtTerminal.sound.set(false)   // mute
window.dshCrtTerminal.sound.isOn()       // read state

It is also exported as exports.sound on the client module, for other plugins.

Cues are suppressed while any modifier key is held, and key auto-repeat is ignored, so shortcuts and held keys stay quiet.

Switching between the pair

Install both skins in this repository — dsh-crt-terminal and dsh-pipboy-terminal — and they cooperate rather than fight. Two token themes enabled at once would otherwise produce last-one-wins flicker, so the two bundles share a registry and only one sheet stays enabled at a time (the other is disabled, not removed, so switching is instant).

• a small button in the bottom-right corner shows the active skin (⇄ CRT / ⇄ PIP) — click it to switch
• Alt + Shift + S does the same from the keyboard
• the choice lives in localStorage["dsh-crt-skins:active"] and survives reloads
• only the active skin makes sound, so you never get two sets of key clicks
• window.__dshCrtSkins.setActive("pipboy-terminal") from the console also works

Installed alone, a skin is always active and the switcher button stays hidden.

What it does

1. Palette. Pins the whole amber ramp on body, including the accents the platform otherwise routes through DeepSeek blue in dark mode (--dsw-static-deepseek-400/450, --dsw-alias-link, --dsw-alias-button-info-fill, --dsw-alias-state-business-primary). Without those pins the composer send button, the sidebar folder icon, links and the trajectory selection rail all render blue on an amber screen. Warning states move off the amber ramp on purpose — an alert that is also amber carries no signal.

2. Phosphor bloom. A light three-layer text-shadow on body copy and a heavier one on headings and controls, so long text stays crisp instead of turning to mush.

3. Square corners. DSH draws pills; this draws boxes. The composer card, the new-session button, the hero preview badge and the composer action buttons are squared. The send/stop disc keeps its bright fill, so its currentColor glyph is forced dark for contrast.

4. Boxed panels. The composer card, the right sidebar panel, Cordis panels and the queue dock get a bright rule and corner brackets. These are keyed off stable data-* attributes rather than hashed CSS-module class names, and an inset box-shadow draws the frame so nothing reflows.

5. CRT glass. Fine scanlines, a curved-screen vignette built with farthest-corner (so the corners genuinely darken), a faint top bezel highlight and a 2.2% phosphor cast, with a slow flicker that respects prefers-reduced-motion.

6. Audio cues. See above.

Verified against

DSH Web 0.1.5-rc.1 on Windows 11. Compatibility outside that range is untested.

Attribution

Developed alongside, and its palette tuned against, dsh-pipboy-theme (npm dsh-pipboy-theme@1.0.0, published by lizalise, MIT) — a Fallout Pip-Boy CRT theme whose palette informed this one, and whose browser bundle demonstrated the window.__ModuleLoader__.load client-plugin contract.

That package ships no LICENSE file, no author and no repository field, so the npm publisher name above is the only attribution available.

No source file, audio asset or parameter table is copied from it. The audio layer here is an independent implementation; it does use the same standard Web Audio technique (enveloped oscillators plus a band-passed noise burst), which is simply how this kind of cue is synthesized.

The amber reference was sampled from the Fallout 4 in-game Pip-Boy 3000 interface with its amber display setting.

License

MIT